Jordan Kobritz

Articles matching tag: MiLB

One of my favorite professors in law school used to say, “I can win any case if you give me the side with the sex appeal.”
I was reminded of my professor recently when I traveled to Washington D.C. as part of a Minor League Baseball (MiLB) contingent to lobby Congress on a bill titled the “Save America’s Pastime Act,” a name that screams sex appeal. Sounds like a bill that should receive bipartisan support and sail through the legislative process, right? Alas, that was not to be. Some members of the media and other pontificators, unable or unwilling to see the bill for what it really was, were quick to vilify Major League Baseball (MLB) for attempting to take advantage of MiLB players.

Major League Baseball (MLB) kicked off the 2016 season on April 3 with the familiar sights and sounds of players in uniform, bats hitting balls, pitches plunking into catchers’ mitts, and fans cheering for their home team. But one thing is missing in seven of the 30 MLB ball parks: Smokeless tobacco.
Baseball players have used smokeless tobacco for more than a century, since the days of Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth. Although the federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC) says that smokeless tobacco use among baseball players has declined over the years, according to Matthew L. Myers, President of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, an estimated 25-30% of MLB players currently use smokeless tobacco. That number is surprising, considering that all tobacco products are banned at the high school, college and Minor League Baseball (MiLB) levels.

In December during the annual Baseball Winter Meetings MLB announced new guidelines designed to extend ballpark netting. The recommendations follow a season during which a number of serious injuries at ballparks around the country garnered extensive publicity.
MLB’s new policy is not a mandate. Teams are “encouraged” to extend the netting from behind home plate a distance of 70 feet down each foul line, or to the ends of the dugouts nearest to home plate. The guidelines also apply to MLB spring training facilities and Pat O’Conner, President of Minor League Baseball, said he hoped MiLB clubs would comply as well. A number of MLB and MiLB teams have already indicated their intention to do so.
Critics have voiced their displeasure with the new guidelines, claiming MLB didn’t go far enough. First, they say the policy should be mandatory and second, that the netting should extend to the outfield side of the dugouts, if not further.

Major League Baseball’s Minor League system is under attack - again. In early December four former Minor League Baseball (MiLB) players filed a lawsuit claiming that MLB is in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act for conspiring to suppress MiLB salaries in a variety of ways.
The suit, known as the Miranda case, follows on the heels of the Senne case filed last February. In Senne the Plaintiffs claim that MiLB players are paid less than the minimum wage in violation of the Federal Labor Standards Act (FLSA). MLB countered that MiLB players are seasonal workers; they are apprenticing for a job in MLB; some of the hours devoted to training are for the players’ own benefit; and the players should be classified as interns. If any of those scenarios apply, MLB may be exempt from the provisions of the FLSA.

If you want to know why the NCAA is out of touch with the rest of the country all you have to do is look at the testimony delivered by its President, Mark Emmert, during his appearance as a witness in the O’Bannon trial last week.
The O’Bannon case is just one of a number of high profile lawsuits that have been filed against the NCAA during the past several years. The suit alleges, among things, that the governing body violates federal anti-trust laws by preventing athletes from selling their image rights to the highest bidder.